"Now, see here," said the boss, sitting down; "this is a peculiar case.
This chap's been at me for a job for months. There's nothing in the
office. He's a fine fellow and well educated, but he's on his uppers. He
can't seem to land anywhere. I'm sorry for him. He looks as if he was
headed for the bread line. He's too good to roll barrels, but it won't
hurt him. If you'll take him in and use him I'll give him a place as
soon as I get it; let me know how he pans out."
"Just ask him to run all the way here," I said, and put my nose down in
a bill of lading. After a while the door opened and some one said, "Is
this the shipping clerk?" It was the ghost of a voice I used to know and
I turned around in a hurry. It was Jarvis.
I don't suppose it is strictly business to cry while you are shaking
hands with a husky you're just putting into harness at one-fifty per. I
didn't intend to do it, but somehow when your whole conception of fame
and glory comes clattering down about your ears, and you find you've got
to order your star and idol to get a hustle on him and load the car at
door four damquick, you are likely to do something foolish. I just
stood and sniveled and let my mouth hang open. Neither of us said a
word, but presently I put my arm around his shoulders and led him out
into the shipping room. "There's the foreman," I said, in a voice like a
wet sponge. "And you report here at six o'clock sharp." Then I went and
hunted up Allie and for once we let business go hang in business hours.
We couldn't work. We kept clawing for the solid ground and trying to
readjust society and the universe and the beacon lights of progress all
afternoon.
When quitting time came we waited for Jarvis. We didn't say anything,
but we loaded him into a cab and took him up to the old café. Then he
told us his story, while we learned a lot of things about glory we
hadn't even vaguely suspected before. He was one of the greatest
football players who ever carried a ball, Jarvis was. Of that there was
no doubt. He admitted it himself then. I might say he confessed it. He'd
come to his university without any real preparation--you know even in
the best regulated institutions of learning they sometimes get your
marks on tackling mixed with your grades on entrance algebra. He'd spent
two hours a day on football and the rest of his time being a college
hero. He'd had to work at it like a dog, he said. How he got by the
exams, he never knew. It seemed to him as if he must have studied in his
sleep. By the time he graduated he'd had about every honor that has been
invented for campus consumption. He belonged to the exclusive
societies. All kinds of big people had shaken hands with him--asked for
the privilege. He had a scrapbook of newspaper stories about his career
that weighed four pounds. He knew the differences between eight kinds of
wine by the taste and he had a perfect education in forkology,
waltzology, necktiematics, and all the other branches of social science.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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